Anthropic’s $7 billion Decart deal puts a spotlight on its little-known 23-year-old co-founder and chief scientist
Orian Leitersdorf has largely remained out of the spotlight as his brother Dean and Moshe Shalev built Decart into one of Israel’s most closely watched AI startups. Now, the proposed acquisition could make all three founders billionaires and give the 23-year-old scientist a role inside one of the world’s leading AI companies.
Anthropic's potential $7 billion acquisition of Israeli AI startup Decart would be one of the biggest deals in the country's technology industry. It would also bring new attention to the company's least-known founder, 23-year-old Orian Leitersdorf.
Leitersdorf is Decart's chief scientist and the younger brother of CEO and co-founder Dean Leitersdorf, who has been the public face of the company alongside co-founder Moshe Shalev.
Orian, by contrast, has largely remained out of the spotlight.
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Decart founders Orian Leitersdorf (from right), Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev.
(Amit Elkayam)
His academic record is difficult to overlook. He studied electrical and computer engineering at the Technion and last year, at the age of 22, became the youngest student in the institution's history to complete a doctorate. The previous record was held by his older brother Dean.
Now Orian is part of a company that Anthropic is preparing to acquire for approximately $7 billion.
The deal is nearing the signing stage, with Anthropic and Decart exchanging advanced drafts of an agreement, although no transaction has yet been signed. Most of the consideration is expected to be paid in Anthropic shares.
Market estimates suggest that, if the transaction is completed, each of Decart's founders could ultimately receive more than $1 billion.
The potential acquisition has put Decart at the center of an increasingly intense contest among some of the world's largest technology companies.
Decart has attracted investment from Nvidia, which was also in advanced negotiations to acquire the company before Anthropic emerged with its offer. Nvidia is believed to have offered a higher valuation, but Decart's shareholders preferred Anthropic.
The proposed transaction would value Decart at roughly $7 billion, about 50% above the $4 billion valuation at which it raised its latest funding round only months ago.
Founded in 2023, Decart employs about 100 people and has raised $450 million.
Its technology is designed to improve the efficiency of AI computing, including by increasing the performance of GPUs and other chips. Industry estimates suggest that its technology can allow AI models to run substantially faster, potentially reducing the enormous computing costs facing AI companies as demand for inference grows.
Decart has also developed technology for generating video in real time, with potential applications ranging from gaming to physical AI and robotics.
Those capabilities are increasingly relevant to Anthropic as the AI industry moves beyond the race to build ever-larger models and toward the challenge of running those models efficiently at enormous scale.
